Fighting to belong: Soviet WWII Veterans in Israel

Focusing on a group of elderly immigrants from the former USSR living in Israel, this ethnographic study examines a matter that has received scant attention in the literature: immigration in old age and the complex relationship of older immigrants to the host country. Finding themselves in a situation of multiple marginality, these immigrants search for a means of belonging in their new country. In this particular group, a narrative of the past - that of their service in the Red Army during WWII - is the central symbolic resource mobilized in forging an identity of honor and esteem within the host society and in constructing their narrative of inclusion. By observing the present circumstances of the elderly immigrants' lives and exploring their pasts in light of sociopolitical factors and social memory frames of the former and host societies, the article demonstrates how a soldiering identity serves the veterans in restoring the rupture between past and present. The veterans' Victory Day parade held in Jerusalem, marking the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany, epitomizes their commemorative work and shows how their identity of belonging is constructed.